


what a fellowship, what a joy divine

by ptiny



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Pre-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:16:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29549193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptiny/pseuds/ptiny
Summary: you spend half your waking hours in camp with him. you know that when it all starts glowing pink in the evenings he turns his head to watch the sun fall just as everyone else.falling in with the van der linde gang, somewhere around 1889.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Original Female Character(s), Arthur Morgan/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	what a fellowship, what a joy divine

he barely says a word to you, the first few weeks.

you realise that holding this against him might be some kind of unfairness, because you’ve hardly made an effort to speak to him either. there is something difficult, nearly hostile there.

john, the younger, is easy. he has the incandescent confidence that a boy gets when he has recently become the height of a man, though he’s still hopelessly rangy and has the quick temper of a child. his cut is that of your brothers, and he likes you well enough. the same for misters van der linde and matthews, who, if they find anything to regret about taking you on, have not shown it.

and miss grimshaw! you have known a dozen susan grimshaws, though most a little more god-fearing. women who wear a hardbitten diligence like armour, who refuse to suffer hangers-on. you had briefly wondered if she would find this to be an agreeable comparison - being likened to the christian sisters who ran holyhead house. the notion was dispelled one morning riding, when dutch asked if you had some kind of singing voice and you told him that you only knew the hymns, really.

miss grimshaw’s eyebrows shot up. ‘we are passing the river not long from now, girl, and i make no assurances about whether or not you’ll end up in the drink if you start singing about _what the lord hath made_.’

and you had laughed, because it was friendly, and mean, and the sisters had been mean, too.

but arthur, you aren’t sure what to make of. he speaks to you as needs speaking, and the only acknowledgement of your existence further than that is the occasional clip upside john’s head for the kind of language that doesn’t befit a young woman’s company. you could assure him of exactly what kind of language you and the girls at holyhead were accustomed to, but you suspect that it’s more an excuse to belt john than anything else.

and in his work ethic—insofar as what you’re all doing is _work_ —there is the air of ever-stern protestantism about him, even for a boy without god. compared to his philosophical father, he is quick to find the killing point of conversations. but something in you guesses that it’s only an air. you spend half your waking hours in camp with him. you know that when it all starts glowing pink in the evenings he turns his head to watch the sun fall just as everyone else.

and you have seen him under lamplight drawing in that journal of his, bent over nearly double such is the privacy of the thing.

—

towards the end of your first month, as a particularly vicious summer begins to settle in, you decide that you have had your fill of pickpocketing and scrubbing overshirts. there has been some talk about a stagecoach heading across the state border, and you can shoot a gun about as straight as is useful.

dutch seems somewhat charmed when you suggest you ride out with them. susan tuts something about her _just_ having gotten used to a second pair of hands, and there’s only a hint of humour about dutch when he replies that they never shoot the girl.

the next night, you’re waiting by bird a whole quarter hour before you’re due to leave. you have bitten your nails down nearly to the quick. hosea sensed some nerves about you and had offered a book that afternoon. you, prize idiot, spent the next hour turning pages slowly and feeling your ears burn with embarrassment at the idea of confessing that you could only read a handful of the words.

‘ain’t it a little late to head out of camp, miss?’

you’ve been holding your book open and staring into the middle distance when his voice pulls you from it.

‘evening, arthur,’ you say. ‘i’m riding out with y’all.’

dutch hasn’t told him. he has grace enough to avoid looking dismayed, only nodding and turning to boadicea. she’s a queenly thing, frisky and headstrong for everyone but him. you watch her press her nose sweetly into his big hand, and wonder that the same filly nearly took your teeth out when john taught you how to fix her shoe.

‘what are you reading, then?’

you nearly start. a question, from arthur morgan. ‘a book hosea loaned me. about - uh - cities, and adventure, and some such.’

he looks at you sideways, one eyebrow cocked. ‘sure. you got something y’can put a hole in a man with?’

‘john’s old revolver. though i’m told i shouldn’t have to draw it.’

he nods and slips back into his silence, then, and you suppose it’s over. but then he’s drawing two cigarettes out and handing one over, wordlessly. you thank him and bring it to your mouth and are waiting for a match when he reaches over and lights it for you instead, the flame throwing shifting light over his hand and face, the back of your neck flushing hot.

the smoke hangs curling between you. the distance feels too large and too small at once. where you’re from, men don’t do that for women, or not without some intention. but he doesn’t give you a second glance, and the long line of his body stays perfectly relaxed. he raises a hand to dutch and hosea as they approach.

up whatever northern part he was born in they must light women’s cigarettes like it’s nothing. you have heard stranger things about the place.

—

the robbery is nearly too simple to believe. you almost want to take pity on the kind of stagecoach driver who would, in this day and age, dismount to help some pretty young thing stranded on the side of the road. you are collectively six hundred and fifty dollars richer for his naivety, a sum that may as well be six million for how foreign it feels to you.

there’s an undeniable beauty in the desert you’ve been making camp in, hiding in the footholds of flat-topped mountains. but the nights are still cold, and as soon as your clothes are clean they’re flushed red with dust again. you nearly leap when dutch suggests taking some of the money and making a few nights of it in the nearest town.

it’s small, of course. there’s a school, a church, a saloon and a union hall, then a few hundred men who go out to lay down the tracks and come home to drink.

‘something sad about this kind of town,’ arthur says. you’re hitching the wagon outside the saloon and drawing sideways looks from people who don’t seem used to unfamiliar faces.

‘it has its charm,’ hosea smiles. ‘you know, she grew up in a place not unlike it.’

it takes you a beat to realise that he’s talking about you. you shake your head. ‘no offence to be taken. sapello lake was like this, mister matthews, and it was sad indeed.’

hosea laughs warmly. you watch arthur turn his face toward the road, away from the two of you, and half-heartedly hide a grin.

john is settled at a table and halfway through a beer before the rest of you are inside. he presents a second to you as you approach.

‘heard you did a good job, today,’ he says.

the beer is already mostly warm, and you find something amusing about young john deciding to be the arbiter of handing out rewards for a job well done, but you take it. it’s like your nerves haven’t had a chance to be shot through until just now. when he produces a pouch of tobacco and gestures obligingly, you find what should be a well-practiced motion nearly impossible.

john is laughing, chin resting in his hand. ‘if you can’t roll, i can-‘

you shush him, brow furrowed, as you finally get the thing into some sort of shape and run your tongue along the paper’s edge. nearly rip it clean in two with the shaking, but it’s smokeable.

‘ _if you can’t roll,_ ’ you scoff. ‘you must think i lived in a tower ’til i met y’all.’ 

he pushes a box of matches across the table, watching as you light up. ‘sort of did. can’t imagine much to make you blush in that - what was it? - _reformatory?_ ’

‘they don’t stick you in those for praying too hard, john.’

he barks a surprised laugh, nodding slowly. ‘well, alright then. guess that’s me shown.’

a little easy conversation and another round between you passes before arthur pulls up a seat next to john. his face fixed all serious, he rests his folded arms on the table as john’s story dies off and you both wait, expectant, for whatever bad news he’s bringing.

‘leave it, marston,’ is what he says. ‘you’re too young for her.’

a _joke._ the world might be ending. john swears sharply, but can’t hide some amusement. you kiss your teeth, mock-chastising, swat at arthur’s arm.

‘john has nothing but chaste intentions - he’s a brother -‘ you can’t help the laughter breaking up your sentences, ‘- a brother to me, and i won’t have you _implying_ -‘

‘exactly,’ john interrupts. ‘but if- and if- you know, if they weren’t, i’d be, i think. not too young, really.’ he’s looking at you for a lifeline, half-serious and half seeing the hilarity of it all, and you remember this exact excruciating, vulnerable stage of your youth. you reach over and squeeze his hand fondly.

‘if anything, marston, it’s not that you’re too young. i’m too old is all mister morgan was trying to say.’

you’ve got both of them laughing and blushing down to their necks, now, and it feels good. it’s been the day for cracking out of the shell you know they’ve both pictured around you. sweet enough but fragile, a hanger-on, with some kind of saintly modesty that should probably be kept intact until they can find you some town to depart and settle. they could have had this notion dispelled a little earlier, if they’d asked. but those revelations have thus far been saved for hosea, who’s interested in everything, it seems.

he was interested in how the eldest of one of sapello’s more well-liked families ended up robbing folk on the lonely stretch of road north of holyhead reformatory for girls. sweet enough strangers, like the driver today, who believe anything coming from someone young and pretty and sad enough. who might leave money hanging out the pocket of a discarded jacket - or, if you were lucky, let you ride in the wagon bed and have whatever you were quiet enough to take. it worked half the time, and the other half you were hungry. but it was better than living with the forty-five of them girls, all boiling over with anger and hopelessness and mean streaks a mile wide. and the sisters! the humiliation of it, the punishment. all of it over a little drink and a boy who was, back then, the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen.

the first time you told him, hosea said, gently smiling, that the whole thing sounded kind of literary.

‘i’ll put it in a book one day,’ you replied. ‘probably get mighty rich off some of the worst parts.’

his smile had widened into a grin. ‘it’s a new america, after all. you can sell anything with a little debauchery.’

‘i’m not as versed in history and all as you,’ you said, standing from the fireside and brushing off your skirts. ‘but i am inclined to think that things have maybe always been that way.’

he had glanced at you carefully, gauging your seriousness. when he saw the corner of your mouth twist upwards, he broke out in clear, pleased laughter.

—

‘get _up,_ girl, chrissakes, the law are here.’

you’re out of the bed so fast you nearly flatten yourself out when your foot catches in the sheet. susan tuts, throwing an overcoat towards you, shoving you to where your carpetbag is packed.

‘for us?’

‘some point in the small hours, few men - who knows - held up and cleaned out half of main street.’ you wonder how a whisper can be so loud. ‘now these shitkicking county law finally have something to do, and they’re knocking on doors.’

if you strain, you can hear it - a conversation down the hall, one bleary voice and two with the drawling, unearned confidence of every lawman. you don’t have time to listen proper, what with miss grimshaw nearly throwing you out the window herself.

the ride out of town is quiet, most of you still half-asleep. feeling too exhausted to ride, you had considered sitting in the wagon and letting bird follow behind. but you wanted to prove something, wanted to run here.

arthur slows boadicea to pull back aside you, head cocked.

‘leanin’ so far in that saddle i should worry you might fall out,’ he says. half-kidding, but still quiet enough that only you hear him.

‘would’ve liked a few more hours in that bed, if not nights,’ you smile ruefully. ‘even if miss grimshaw was on the other side.’

he huffs a laugh, opens his mouth as if to say something. closes it again and clears his throat. you must have ridden another half mile before he settles on something.

‘it’s a whole lot of this,’ he says. ‘running, that is. if you - if you stay, there’s not much in the way of peace.’

it’s the most candid thing he’s said to you as long as you’ve known him. you wonder if he has a suspicion one way or the other— whether you’ll stay with them or run. more, if he has some kind of preference.

‘the running’s alright,’ you say. ‘it’s the waiting makes me nervous.’

he nods as if this makes more sense to him than it does even to you. for a moment, you think he might spend the rest of the ride like this. then he takes boadicea’s reins in both hands and clicks his tongue, rides ahead of the wagon. all the starlight sharp through the trees and falling across the dark shape of him.


End file.
